|
|
|
|
|
Farce
Capital The little games of Delhi's smart set will not determine India's future. By Ashok Mitra LOLLIPOP STREET The subtitle Tavleen Singh has chosen for this collection of sketches of mostly political figures who have of late dominated the Indian media -- print and electronic -- is: "Why India will survive its politicians". But it is hard going. One searches in vain among the pages of Lollipop Street to locate the factor or factors likely in the author's judgement to rescue the system from perdition. The bulk of the book is the spin-off of two-in-one journalism, now an important adjunct of upper stratum life and living in the nation's capital; television interviews with personalities such as Chandra Shekhar, V.P. Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Rabri Devi, et al, spliced with free-ranging commentary on the conduct and demeanour of the chosen characters. A threesome of chapters towards the end makes forays into Singh's constricted world of literature, art, architecture, as well as the milieu of business, films and fashion. The narration has that breathless quality which is the trademark of the breed of journalists in the post-economic reforms era. The shallow calls to the shallow. Singh has picked a bunch of leaders who constitute the nation's narrow political superstructure. They may appear to represent distinct aspects of the ongoing national discourse. This is just an optical illusion though. These politicians actually have a lot in common; they have all catapulted to prominence as a result of the country's systemic instability, which is the product as much of Mandal-mandir dialectics as of the proliferation of opportunities with the ushering in of the open sesame of liberalisation. In her general approach and moral stance, Singh herself is no different from the victims she has targeted. Her understanding of India's political economy is, to say the least, extremely supercilious. The nation's none-too-commendable economic circumstance, even after half a century of independence, she attributes entirely to "Nehruvian socialism". But whatever economic infrastructure this lugubrious country can still lean on, the record will show, is the outcome of efforts put in during that earlier epoch. In contrast, India's macro-economic performance since 1991 is uniformly disappointing; agriculture has stagnated, the rate of industrial growth has slumped, savings and investment have levelled off and employment opportunities for the masses have shrunk ominously. None of these is of little concern to the author; that the only politician emerging unscathed from her scrutiny is arch-conservative P. Chidambaram sums it up. It would be futile to explain to Singh that the phenomenon of an expanding public sector in the Nehru era was no socialism. The feudal capitalist elements who made up the ruling set monopolised the benefits. And one has not heard of a single road for the rich or any other public utility that has come up through private, non-foreign initiative in more recent years despite all fetters being off. The author's stock-in-trade of naivet and instant arrival of verdict is best exemplified by her remark that in the dark Nehruvian days as much as 95 per cent of income was confiscated as tax. She quotes the marginal rate of taxation at the highest level then prevailing. It was in very rare instances, however, that a company on the average paid more than 40 per cent of its earnings in the form of taxation. Tax revenue as a proportion of GDP in India circa the '60s was way below that in the Scandinavian countries, the UK and -- what do you know -- the US as well. Notwithstanding Singh's tittle-tattle, the toings and froings of Delhi's smart set will not be the determinants of history. The Indian nation will survive (and hopefully advance) because, uncomprehendingly for her and her cohorts, the stirrings at the base, populated by those wretched millions, are yet capable of springing quite a few surprises. How many Indian magic realism novels can you take? By Ira Pande THE BUFFALO THIEF As rumours of literary fortunes being made by first-time writers filtered in from the West it was only natural that it would be followed by a stampede among Indian writers across the globe. Fat novels, thin novels, black, brown, red and blue -- every mood and mode is now being explored and placed in the marketplace. How many more books about grandmothers who have magical powers, innocent orphans and talking animals will we have to endure? The Company School of Painting in the 19th century produced portraits of Indians commissioned by the nabobs of the East India Company and executed by Indian artists. These were pictures of Indian men and manners to show the family back home what the Orient was all about. I suppose Yojana Sharma's book is part of what could be called the Company School of Writing, novels about the Indian way of life commissioned by publishing houses scouring the horizon for another Rushdie or Arundhati Roy. The book has shades of many others that have crossed this terrain. The white monkey who writes on a typewriter in Vikram Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain is now a buffalo called Jhotta, who has a treasure in her belly. A little girl lives with a blind grandmother, except that this one, unlike Roy's grandmother, does not play the violin. A village and a small town in India, now where was that? A mother who remarries and moves away to her new house. This sense of deja vu continues. Tedious, pretentious and self-consciously crafted, the book is a result of the effect English literature has on young minds when they attend writing workshops. Given a reasonable style and, most importantly, a supportive editor who says you have a "formidable talent", go ahead, write that novel. But anyone who wishes to spend close to Rs 1,000 on this book must have his head examined. NEW RELEASES |
||||
| Top |
 © Living Media India Ltd |
